Coutlass lay dead under the defeated beast that had crawled away to hide and lick his wounds.  We dragged his body out from under, and in proof that Schillingschen, the common enemy, lived, a bullet came whistling between us.  The flash of my shot had given him direction.  Perhaps he could see us, too, against the moon.  We ducked, and lay still, but no more shots came.

“He’s only got four left,” Will whispered.  “Maybe he’ll husband those!”

“Maybe he knows by now that box is empty!” said I.  “He’ll stalk us on the way back!”

“Us for the tree, then, until morning!” said Will.

“Sure!” I answered.  “And be shot out of it like crows out of a nest!”

But Will had the right idea for all that.  He was merely getting at it in his own way.  After a little whispering we went to work with fevered fingers, stripping off the bloody bandages we had tied on the Greek’s ribs—­stripping off more of his clothes—­then more of ours—­tying them all into one—­then skinning the mangled lion with the long knife that had really ended his career, tearing the hide into strips and knotting them each to each.  In twenty minutes we had a slippery, smeary, smelly rope of sorts.  In five more we had dragged the Greek’s dead body underneath the tree.

Then I went back to the vantage point among the rocks and waited until Will had thrown the rope with a stone tied to its end over an upper branch.  Presently I saw Coutlass’ dead body go clambering ungracefully up among the branches, looking so much less dead than alive that I thought at first Will must have tangled the rope in the crotch of the tree and be clambering up to release it.

The ruse worked.  Georges Coutlass served us dead as well as living.  Out of the darkness to my left there came a flash and a report.  I did not look to see whether the corpse in the tree jerked as the bullet struck.  Before the flash had died—­almost before the crack of the report bad reached my ear-drums I answered with three shots in quick succession.

“Did you get him?” called Will.

“I don’t know,” I answered.  “If I didn’t, he’s only got three cartridges left!”

We left the Greek’s body in the tree for Schillingschen to shoot at further if be saw fit; it was safer there from marauding animals than if we had laid it on the ground, and as for the rites of the dead, it was a toss-up which was better, kites and vultures, or jackals and the ants.  We saw no sense that night in laboring with a knife and our hands to bury a body that the brutes would dig up again within five minutes of our leaving it.

“Schillingschen has three cartridges,"’ sad Will.  “One each for you, me and Fred Oakes!  I’ll stay and trick him some more.  I’ll think up a new plan.  I don’t care if he gets me.  I’d hate to face Fred without my rifle, and have to tell him the enemy is laying for him with it through my carelessness.”